The Vampire Narcise (Regency Draculia 3)

He'd said she was strong. Oh, he had no idea how strong she was. Her hand closed over a doorknob and she turned it, not caring where it led, hardly aware of what she was doing. Have to get away from him.

"By the Fates, Narcise, listen-"

"I can't bear-" She shoved a hand over her mouth to hold back the vomit, and stumbled through the door. As she slammed it behind her, falling against it, trying to breathe something other than him and his depravity, he slammed against it, rattling it in its hinges.

And then he was gone.

He didn't remember leaving Cezar's subterranean residence after those nights of hell.

In retrospect, a decade later, Giordan wondered that the man even allowed him to do so-but then, of course, by that time, Cezar had gotten all that he'd wanted.

At least, for the moment.

With Narcise's hate-filled, witchlike visage burning in his memory, her acid words screaming in his mind, Giordan found himself raging blind and lost through the streets. Violence pounded through him, his abused body weak and overused, his hands, his very skin a reeking reminder of the hours and days past.

He had no real memory of where he went and what he did once out of Cezar's place: it was dark, and his world became a hot, red rampage, filled with the taste and scent of blood, the heat and suppleness of living flesh, the rhythmic pulsing against his body, the slap and thud of flesh against flesh. There might have been screams, shouts, cries, moans and groans. There were certainly deaths and injuries.

Giordan's vision burned with red shadow. It was as if coals had been shoved beneath his lids and seared into his irises, coloring his sight.

He supposed he went mad.

Do you have any idea what I've done for you? His own hoarse words rolled in his brain, over and over, desperate and angry even as he sought relief. She wouldn't even listen. She wouldn't listen.

He woke sometime, some hours, perhaps days, later in one of Paris's narrow alleys. Tucked back in a corner. Alone.

That moment was clear in his mind even today, a decade after: that moment of reemergence, of clawing up from the depths of a heavy, dark sea. As if he'd dragged himself awake from the worst of nightmares.

But it had been no nightmare, those three nights of hell. And what he'd thought of as the light at the end of the tunnel, as the prize for his endurance and existence through hours of torture, turned only into the slap of betrayal. And the hot memory of humiliation.

Narcise.

Giordan rubbed gritty eyes with trembling fingers that smelled of blood and se**n and opium and filth. He saw that the alley was hardly wide enough for him to extend his legs, but so long that he could see only that it angled into nothingness.

The walls on either side of him loomed tall and windowless, like dark sentinels. The brick was cold against his bare back, chill and rough with dirt, sticky with unidentifiable substances. Even springy with a bit of moss. The ground below, uneven with cobbles and filtered with a random tuft of grass, seeped damply into his breeches.

All at once, Giordan became aware of the sun. It emerged from a heavy cloud as if a curtain had been drawn away. The golden light spilled into the alley next to him and would soon filter over the spot where he lay.

At first, he didn't have even the energy to pull to his feet. Nor the desire.

His mind was stark and empty, devoid of thought, even emotion. Just...empty.

Finished.

She'd finished him.

But then, as the base need for self-preservation stirred with the shift of the sun, Giordan prepared to heave himself upright.

At that moment, he saw the cat.

She sat there, pale and blonde against the shades of indigo and violet and gray that filled the alley. Her blue-gray eyes were fixed on him in that way of her race, unblinking and steady.

But there was no miffed accusation in this feline's stare. Her tail, which curled comfortably around her, had no annoyed twitching at its tip. She exuded peace.

She looked just like the cat who'd stared at him from a nearby roof some weeks ago. Just after he'd met Narcise.

Giordan realized belatedly that some of the weakness in his body stemmed from the presence of his Asthenia, positioned just-so in front of him. She sat just far enough away that he wasn't breathless and paralyzed, but close enough that he felt the essence of her presence like uncomfortable waves.

And he realized that, until she moved, he could not escape from the alley.

"Scat!" he said with as much sharpness as he could muster, but at the same time, a wave of grief for his own fat orange Chaton roughened the back of his throat. "Move!"

The cat looked at him, her eyes intelligent and steady. And she didn't move.

Even when he threw a stone toward her, she didn't flinch. She hardly deigned to notice when the rock scuttled across the stones next to her.

Giordan looked up and saw the light blazing above in a perfect, cerulean sky. Hot and yellow and bright. The beams had begun to fill the alley in an ever-widening triangle of light, turning the stones lighter gray, glazing them with hints of yellow and rust, coloring the random tufts of grass green.

It was only a matter of time until the rays would fall onto him; now they eased slyly against his breeches and filtered over the heel of his battered boot.

He pressed himself up against the wall, crouched in the corner, glaring at the cat.

"Move!" he shouted again, and looked for something else to throw at the stubborn creature. There was nothing. He managed to work one of his boots from his foot-a very long, difficult process in his weakened state-and when it finally came free, he flung it clumsily toward the thing.

It tumbled just behind her and she barely lifted her chin as it thudded onto the cobbles.

He began to heave himself to his feet, but at that moment, the cat decided it was time to move...and she sauntered toward him.

As she came closer, the rest of Giordan's strength fell away. His lungs slowed their movements, his chest felt heavy and constricted and his muscles ceased to respond.

Giordan sank back onto the ground, leaning against the wall as the cat positioned herself directly in front of him. So close he could see the gray and black flecks in her unblinking eyes, and even the fact that she had whiskers in both white and black. Her ears were two perfect triangles sitting at the top of her head, and her fur was lush and long like corn silk. He had a moment of madness and nearly reached to touch that soft fur.

Feeling ebbed from his body and he closed his eyes against the nothingness that swept over him. Blankness...something even beyond paralysis.

After a moment, he opened his eyes and saw the sun just peeking over the roof above him. Soon, it would be directly overhead, pouring into the alley.

He'd burn.